Piet Mondrian

Composition C (No.III) with Red, Yellow and Blue 1935

Dutch pioneer of abstract art, who developed from early landscape pictures to geometric abstract works of a most rigorous kind. Born in Amersfoort, Utrecht. Studied painting at the Amsterdam Academy 1892-4 and again, part-time, 1896-7. Friendship with the painter Simon Mans and painted landscapes in the Hague School tradition. Began to work in a more vividly coloured and sometimes pointillist style in 1908, joined the Theosophic Organisation in 1909 and made some works of a Symbolist character.

 

Pantone - Colour of 2014

Pantone have revealed the colour for 2014 as 18-3224 Radiant Orchid. Such a beautiful dramatic shade of purple, Radiant Orchid complements olive and deeper hunter greens, and offers a gorgeous combination when paired with turquoise, teal and even light yellows.

http://youtu.be/w7nh3NNBlUo 

Jean-Michel Frank

Jean-Michel Frank

Jean Michel Frank was not a minimalist. Some view him as a 1930's maitre of minimalism, However Frank was surprisingly multidimensional.

Frank's life was sadly tainted in 1915 with the death of his two brothers in ww1. His father committed suicide. In 1928, he lost his mother who had been in a Swiss asylum for several years.

Jack Vettriano

Born in Fife, Scotland in 1951, Jack Vettriano left school at sixteen to become a mining engineer. For his twenty-first birthday, a girlfriend gave him a set of watercolour paints and, from then on, he spent much of his spare time teaching himself to paint. In 1989, he submitted two paintings to the Royal Scottish Academy’s annual exhibition; both were accepted and sold on the first day. 

Mies Van Der Rohe

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe 

 (1886-1969), a German-born architect and educator, is widely acknowledged as one of the 20th century's greatest architects. By emphasizing open space and revealing the industrial materials used in construction, he helped define modern architecture.


Born in Aachen, Germany, Mies spent the first half of his career in his native country. His early work was mainly residential, and he received his first independent commission, the Riehl House, when he was only 20 years old. Mies quickly became a leading figure in the avant-garde life of Berlin and was widely respected in Europe for his innovative structures, including the Barcelona Pavilion. In 1930, he was named director of the Bauhaus, the renowned German school of experimental art and design, which he led until 1933 when he closed the school under pressure from the Nazi Regime.

Bauhaus

The Bauhaus was founded in 1919 in the city of Weimar by German architect Walter Gropius (1883–1969). Its core objective was a radical concept: to reimagine the material world to reflect the unity of all the arts. Gropius explained this vision for a union of art and design in the Proclamation of the Bauhaus (1919), which described a utopian craft guild combining architecture, sculpture, and painting into a single creative expression. Gropius developed a craft-based curriculum that would turn out artisans and designers capable of creating useful and beautiful objects appropriate to this new system of living.

The yellow effect!

Mixing antiques with zesty colors for a more contemporary feel. so much fun!